Sunday, January 29, 2012

Not Much Complaining

Just out of curiosity I clicked through some of the old blog posts from this time last year. I had a very common them running through many of my posts, and that was complaining about the weather. Anyone who has read this blog for, oh, five minutes, knows that I despise cold weather. I define cold as anything under 50 degrees. In my world tolerable is in the 50-60 range, nice is 60-70, and ideal is 70-85ish. Last winter was one of the worst winters I ever remember in middle Tennessee.

This winter has been much more normal. Maybe it is because I bought waterproof gloves, a new coat, two new pairs of boots, smartwool socks, a couple of boxes of toasty toes and several sets of long underwear? (I think I am scarred for life after last winter.) This year I was not going to be caught unprepared, and maybe my state of preparation made the weather gods decide to pick on someone else this winter. Now that I've bragged on my unnecessary winter attire undoubtedly I will have cause to use it all in the near future.

Most of our days this winter have fallen into the tolerable range with a few in the nice range and a couple in ideal. The cold days have been randomly scattered about but have never permanently set up shop. For winter weather I really can't complain about that too much.

With my charming personality of course I can still find something to complain about. Apparently the one thing that is mandatory this winter is heavy rain. We have a few sunny days and then we have a couple of days of hard, heavy rain. Winter is always a wet time of year but this has been a bit over the top. It isn't that I don't want rain, but it would be so nice if all of this extra rain could bless us with its presence in July and August instead of now. The grass would really appreciate it. Is that asking for too much? Probably.

6 comments:

I moved to Reno in '09 and that winter was mindboggling to me. More snow than I'd ever seen at once in my whole life! And they expected me to drive on it! Then last year was even worse, and even the long-time residents were complaining about the endless series of storms and bitterly cold weather. This year's way too dry, fire-wise, but as a warm-blooded Southerner I cannot complain about the temps. I have decided anything above 40 isn't too bad to ride in, once you get mounted and start posting - it's just getting from the warm living room to atop the horse that's a challenge. You've got enough warm clothes that if you could just talk Jason into saddling and warming up your mare, you could ride in anything!

I think last winter did us all in, and I'm pretty hardy. My ideal temp is around 60F with a breeze. It's usually a tad colder than that in Chicago. For this year I splurged on flannel-lined jeans, several pair of new gloves, and a really warm jacket. I've worn the jacket maybe 6 times so far.

Our winter (central west Florida) has been FABULOUS this year! I consider anything under 65 to be cold even though I grew up in New York and we were not allowed to wear pants to school (this was in the late 1960's early 1970's) unless it was 20 degrees or below! Our weather has been in the mid 70's to about 80 and I have only had to wear my toasty toes once or twice. I do not miss the northern weather or even last winter where we had several nights below freezing.

Our weather has been horrid (by my own definition). Yes, it's been mostly much milder than normal which would be nice except what it really means is we get wild temperature swings (14 to 46, and yes even 14 is mild for this time of year!). Combine that with precipitation during those swings and you end up with lots of ice. Ice on top of ice on top of snow topped by more ice. Blah!

I'm having a hard time keeping my toes warm this winter, even if it is mostly mild.